7 Steps to Better Minimalist Landscape Photos

Minimalist landscape photography is one of the hardest styles to pull off well. Strip away too much and the image feels empty; leave too much in and you've lost the point entirely.

Coming to you from Mads Peter Iversen, this practical video walks through seven concrete steps for making minimalist nature photos that actually work. Iversen opens by debunking the idea that you need a specific focal length. A wide angle lens can make a subject feel tiny against a massive sky, while a telephoto can isolate a single tree from a cluttered scene. What he considers genuinely essential is a sturdy tripod, a drone for top-down angles, and ND filters. He calls ND filters "your eraser" because long exposures turn choppy water into smooth, featureless mist, removing visual noise and forcing the eye straight to the subject. That's a genuinely useful reframe if you've thought of ND filters as purely a technical tool rather than a compositional one.

From there, Iversen covers where to find minimalist scenes and what conditions to shoot in. Snow-covered landscapes, foggy mornings, and calm reflective water all do heavy lifting by naturally cleaning the frame. Fog, in particular, physically hides background clutter and adds depth by separating elements through the scene. He also makes the case for moody, dramatic conditions, pointing out that textured storm clouds can reinforce a sense of isolation just as effectively as a serene, still lake. On the composition side, he breaks down the role of negative space, using a shot of Mount Fuji as a direct example of how a large expanse of sky doesn't feel empty but instead directs your attention down to the mountain.

What makes this video worth watching in full is the second half, where Iversen gets into the nuances. One of the more counterintuitive points involves knowing when not to remove elements in post-processing. A completely empty frame can read as unintentional rather than deliberate, and Iversen shows specific examples of how a single secondary element, a cloud on the opposite side of the frame from a lone tree, or a foreground stone near a misty dead tree reflection, creates the visual balance that makes simplicity feel purposeful. He also covers his editing approach, including when he pushes contrast hard even in minimalist shots, and why converting to black and white can strip away color distraction to reveal the graphic structure underneath. Check out the video above for the full breakdown from Iversen.